A new lawsuit accuses the Bradford County Commissioners of illegally slashing the Bradford County Library’s budget and violating the state’s Sunshine Act.
Friends of the Bradford County Library, a citizens group, filed the complaint Feb. 18 in Bradford County Court.
The suit asks the court to restore the library’s budget to $471,106, the amount it was allocated before the commissioners’ December 2024 budget cut decision. BCL’s budget for 2025 is $328,666 – a 30% decrease, though less than the 50% cut which had been proposed earlier in the budgeting process.
This litigation is the latest salvo — and second lawsuit — in ongoing battles between the library’s supporters and county lawmakers over the facility’s funding and future. Since August 2023 advocates have been battling against what they argue are repeated attempts to cover up plans to close down the county’s largest library.
A previous suit was discontinued in December 2023.
“The library has been in significant danger since this all began … now it feels more like a personal vendetta,” Friends’ President Anna Jennings said.
Commissioner Doug McLinko, meanwhile, insists the library must be changed to meet the needs of the community if it's going to stay open.
“But I'm going to be honest with you, I'm not interested in doing it with these people,” McLinko told WVIA News.
Three alleged Sunshine Act violations
Under Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act government agencies may only take official action during open public meetings. The lawsuit alleges the Board of Commissioners violated the act in three different ways:
- The board took official action and deliberated whether to cut the library’s budget during executive session.
- The board did not explain to the public with “sufficient specificity” why it held executive sessions.
- The board did not list the names of every person who spoke and what they said in the Nov. 14, 2024 meeting minutes.
Friends’ attorney Chadwick Schnee said his clients should be granted a permanent injunction to restore the library’s budget as the board legally should not have spoken about changing the budget during executive session.
Government agencies can hold executive sessions for a select few topics. They can discuss public safety or some personnel issues, but only “the conditions of employment for current or prospective employees,” he added.
“But discussing a budget does not fall within any of the exceptions to the Sunshine Act at all, and those discussions have to occur in front of the public so that the public can witness the deliberation decision making of their elected officials,” Schnee said.
If a board needs to hold an executive session, it must provide sufficient reasoning to the public. Scnhee said the board must provide more detail than stating “we're talking about litigation or we're talking about legal matters.’” Lawmakers should provide something like “the case name or the case docket number or the specification,” he said, citing Reading Eagle Company v. Council of the City of Reading.
That allows the public to “gauge whether that was a proper and legal closed-door meeting under the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act,” Schnee said.
McLinko disputes allegations
McLinko is adamant that the board has not broken the Act, calling the case “a bunch of baloney.”
He reiterated his view that the library is underutilized and over-budgeted.
“They want a guaranteed budget of $450,000 a year … the average budget of the other eight libraries in our county are probably right around maybe $80,000 to $100,000,” McLinko said.
There are eight other libraries in Bradford County, which “need more money just to survive in their local communities,” he added.
The cuts meant BCL’s hours of operation were reduced from 65 to 47 hours a week. Besides being the county’s largest library, it also supplements the other eight libraries’ collections through interlibrary loans and a bookmobile.
McLinko said the budget and the decision to fire Interim Director Rebecca Troup-Hodgdon in November 2024 are finally getting BCL on track. He said he could not discuss her termination as it was a “personnel issue,” and commended longtime employee Alan Roloson for running the library in her place.
He did not give an update as to when a new director would be hired, but said they have to be “forward-thinking” and turn BCL into a “destination library.”
McLinko said he plans to ‘reimagine’ BCL, which is in Troy, into a place that convinces people to “drive out to the middle of the country to go to a library.”
He restated his hope to get Martha Lloyd Community Services, a community center for people with intellectual disabilities and autism, involved with the library. Other organizations could be brought in too, adding that the library needs to make big changes – even close for a period of time.
“Maybe that's the best thing, to close it, clean it out, and then retool it and open it back up again as a destination library,” McLinko said.
BCL was not the only department that lost funding in the 2025 budget, under which the commissioners voted 2-1 to keep the county’s tax rate the same for the year.
BCL supporters made the library fight “political, and they lost,” McLinko said.
“The voters spoke in the last election … [and] the mood of the country right now is in cost-cutting … the majority of the United States of America spoke and said that they want government cost and waste looked at,” he said. “We do that in Bradford County … we try to keep their taxes low.”
Commissioner Zachary Gates was the sole ‘nay’ vote on the 2025 budget. He argued in favor of raising taxes to prevent a larger tax hike in the future. The county, he said, had to cut funding for most of its departments because it hasn’t raised taxes since 2009.
The overall Bradford County budget for 2025 is $71.9 million, of which the library represents less than half of 1% of all spending.
Friends vow to continue fight
Jennings promised the Friends “are not going anywhere” and will continue to fight for the library even if it closes.
She hopes the lawsuit will hold the commissioners accountable, if not to the library, but to other organizations that could share the same fate.
The next Bradford County Board of Commissioners meeting is March 13 at 10 a.m. at the Bradford County Courthouse, 301 Main St., Towanda.
